EDITORIAL DAMN THE POLITICS RICHMAN-CANCIAMILLA PLAN OFFERS RESOLUTION TO THE STATE BUDGET STALEMATE.

DEMOCRATS and Republicans in Sacramento have spent the better part of the year screaming at each other, both sides refusing to move an inch on the state budget crisis.

The strategy hasn't worked.

Now California is perilously close to missing the June 30 deadline for a new budget, which could cost the state a small fortune at a time when it's already $38 billion in the hole.

It's time to damn the politics.

For Democrats, that means letting go of the dream that the wreckage they caused with their free-spending habits can be salvaged without anything more than cursory spending cuts.

It also means acknowledging that some Republican votes are needed to get the constitutionally required two-thirds majority to approve a budget. That won't happen without sacrifices, like a cap on future spending.

For Republicans, damning the politics means accepting the inevitable: Tax hikes.

The party's resistance on this matter is understandable; we don't like tax increases either, and California is already one of the nation's most overtaxed states.

But guess what, Republicans? Democrats are in the majority. They're in charge, and they're adamant about lessening spending cuts by raising taxes. Tax hikes might not be to your liking, but in this political climate, there's no getting around them.

What both parties must recognize is that if they dig in their heels, they won't get any closer to their vision of the ``ideal'' budget. They'll just drive the state toward bankruptcy.

It's time for Republicans to give up their anti-tax ideology and accept political reality.

It's time for Democrats to turn their backs on the special interests that have fed so well at the public trough.

It's time for the leaders in Sacramento to see that their genuflections to partisan orthodoxy make them look pious only in their own eyes. To the rest of us, their inflexibility looks reckless, as though they're more concerned with politics than the public's well-being.

It's time for a compromise, and as luck would have it, a credible compromise is already on the table.

The budget plan offered by Assemblymen Keith Richman, R-Granada Hills, and Joe Canciamilla, D-Martinez, is far from perfect, but it addresses the crisis and provides longer-term solutions.

For Republicans, it offers steep cuts - significantly greater than the ones Gov. Gray Davis has requested. More importantly, the plan would prohibit future growth in spending from surpassing growth of population and inflation, thus safeguarding the state against the sort of binge that created the current mess.

For Democrats, the plan offers tax hikes on cars and cigarettes and a half-cent sales tax increase that would end when the $11 billion in borrowed money is paid off. Together, these measures would soften the budget cuts, while ensuring more than ample revenue for the future.

For all of us, the plan offers some much-needed reforms in the way California does business.

Chief among those, it would require the state to spend no more than 95 percent of its annual revenues, while putting the remaining 5 percent in a rainy-day fund for the next economic downturn. It also calls for desperately needed reforms in the state's workers' compensation system that would make California more attractive to business.

After these long months of gridlock, it's appalling that 118 of the state's legislators continue to act as though nothing is wrong.

If any of them has a better plan than the Richman-Canciamilla proposal, let them put it forward at once.

If not, it's time to embrace what seems California's best bet to get moving forward again.

Damn the politics, full steam ahead.